Revisiting

One of the most commendable posts in The Paris Review is their article about Google Street View, embedded with layers of Lewis Carroll and Jorge Luis Borges about the idea of a "grand map". There seems to be a lot of hyperrealism going on in Google Street View, both the construction of a "reality" and its glaring similarity with ours, and its being "reality" itself, only rendered in pixels. Either way, I perused my way to my sister's house in New Jersey, my niece's playground, or Bleecker Street. It really is deceiving, in many ways.

At Monocle Magazine they featured 192 Books at Chelsea. I spent an hour perusing graffiti books.

I lit my first cigarette stick in New York in this intersection--in front of the New York Times office, at Port Authority. The entire pack cost me $12, plus a stringent inspection of my passport (maybe I look like--or dressed like--a minor).

The very intersection in Ridgefield Park where I wait for the bus to New York. I used to fetch my Mom here. I've taken pictures of this intersection, but in many ways, Google Street View is a different picture: it's much more interactive, much more touching. The blurring, the digital glitches and limitations (for Google hasn't recorded every other street in America--more so, it has never attempted to roam around third-world countries like ours), the slow Internet speed I have in my college apartment is a tale of archiving memories: sometimes distant, but all the same--a sensorium.

It looks like a version of Sims, though a distant version with real-life images. It still lacks movements--no sensory accompaniments other than the visual. These are snapshots of what our future can be, of what has passed, of how we reconstruct places, memories, reality.